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Friday, October 30, 2009

By The Book Review & Giveaway!

I am always looking for new ways to organize family information in a way that if I am not around, there would be no question as to how things should be done.

I recently came across a product that does just that. By The Book: How To Take Care of My Kids by Melissa Bishop & Karen Berg. It is published by Karmel Publishing. Thank you to Karen Berg & Karmel for a complimentary e-book version to use for the purpose of review.About the Authors:

Melissa was a work at home mom with 2 preschoolers. As a musician, she couldn’t always take a phone call on the job. She was constantly leaving lengthy notes for the sitter- over and over again. And she kept misplacing all those notes over and over again. Every time there was a new sitter, there was a new batch of notes. Karen was a mother who worked outside the home. Having a nanny taking care of her twin preschoolers was a good thing, but there were still tons of notes for the nanny, plus the daily phone calls of questions. And at the end of the day, Karen often wondered what their day was like. Karen and Melissa met when their children began attending the same preschool. Their boys became friends and with that came playdates and many mommy conversations. During those conversations they realized there HAD to be a better way to organize all that information about their children for their caregivers. It was then By the Book: How to Take Care of MY Kids was born. Karen and Melissa began working on the book in November of 2005. By the summer of 2006 they formed Karmel Publishing, LLC. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Karen and Melissa are pursuing the dream of making things easier for other parents by providing quality products to organize it all.

About the Book:

Inside this book you will find pages where you fill out the information for every childcare situation imaginable. Each section deals with the various childcare issues, from health care to emergencies to daily routines.

There are five sections in By The Book: How To Take Care of My Child.

Section I: The Basics

Week At a Glance

Daily Routine

Allergies/Special Needs

School Information

Extra Curricular Details

What They Love, What They Hate

Discipline Tools
Household Odds & Ends
Pet Survival Information

Section II: The Caregiver's Note

Sitter Notes

Nanny News

Section III: Help! It's an Emergency!

Who Do I Call

Authorization to Treat a Minor

Emergency Plans

Find Emergency Equipment

Unusual Circumstances

Family Password
Child Identification

Section IV: All Things Medical

Phone Numbers

Well Visit Records

Immunization Log

Illness Notes (Single Incident)

Illness Log

Section V: Parents Only

Babysitter At A Glance

Babysitter Profiles

Babysitter Interview Questions

Nanny Application

Nanny Interview Questions

Nanny Childcare Agreement

Each page is available for refills in a down loadable format or may be taken out of the notebook and copied for use with the purchaser's children.

My Review:

I loveBy The Book: How To Take Care of My Child. The only thing that a parent has to do with this product is fill in the blanks. All the major work is already done for. That is you don't have to find forms, or create your own, you don't have to worry that you forgot to give grandparents, nanny's or baby sitter's certain information.

You can even keep track of what foods or activities you do not want your child having, or participating in (for example, drinking pop). Its all right there. In fact, this is good for everyone. Even just having it at home.

I am using it as part of my Household Management system. I keep it close by the phone so that if I have to access anything, its right there.

Discount code for you to receive 25% off the hard copy price: BTBK7757 (case sensitive)

Win It: One lucky reader is going to win their own e-book copy of By The Book: How To Take Care of MY Kids!!!

To Enter: Head over to By The Book website and tell me what award this book has won.

Extra Entries:

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